


though it's the end of the world (don't blame yourself, love)

by KaiFukugawa



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Coma, Ghost Drifting, Hallucinations, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mental Disintegration, Not Happy, Panic Attacks, Purple Prose, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, The Drift (Pacific Rim), based on a request from Tumblr, in which the author romeo and juliets the characters, kind of, no happy ending, tagging graphic depictions of violence just to be safe, whether or not mako is alive is left up to you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-09 01:52:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15256806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaiFukugawa/pseuds/KaiFukugawa
Summary: Everything he had is gone.





	though it's the end of the world (don't blame yourself, love)

**Author's Note:**

> based off this request i got sent on my tumblr:  
> Hi, just read one of your lovely (er, well, I made me tear up, so I guess lovely is relative :'D) fics on AO3, and you said requests were welcome here: what if when NotReally!Newt has Hermann by the throat, his oxygen supply is cut off too long? He still manages to save Newt, but goes into a coma afterwards (I headcanon him as having MS), yet the world is still saved without him (idk, go wild here, the most important thing is that he's dying). Newt manages to get cleansed of the Precursors somehow (I'd always imagined that the constant drifting kept up the connection, so once he's locked up it'd gradually restore his sanity). So that's when the real shit starts: Newt has Lovecraftian memories in his mind, knows what the Precursors did and is terrified they could do it again, and starts remembering not only what he's done--aka ending the world, killing Mako, and choking Hermann, who no one will give him information on. I'd always thought he'd be an extremely high suicide risk post PR2 if he regained his mind. There could be suicide attempts if you're comfortable writing that. Eventually, with plenty scans and stuff they clear him of Precursors, and is finally informed Hermann's been in a near-constant coma. He came out of it a few times near the beginning, but his condition is rapidly deteriorating. In the end, he dies--whether he still wakes from his coma & is able to talk to Newt is up to you--leaving an absolutely shattered Newt behind I'd kinda like Newton committing suicide, messed up as that sounds; I struggle heavily with it myself, and somehow reading about angsty death/suicide!fic makes me feel better. You'd think it'd work the other way, but... yeah, idk :') I also love Shatterdome family, so ignoring Mako's fridging is A+, as well as adding PR1 chars & the impact this has on them. Bonus if someone (Kaidanovskys can get everything) smuggles Newt a lethal dose of morphine. Ty&sorry this's so long &no obligation, obv!
> 
> sorry it's taken such a long time! also sorry that i keep on writing solely angst someone pLEase request some smut or fluff or somethin im dyin here,,,,

His hands are around his throat. He knows that. He can't let go.

( _Why can't he...?_ )

Gripping tight, bruises blooming under flesh, the pulse off a beating heart stuttering, kill,  _kill_ ,  _KILL—_

Hermann's thumb—  _Hermann? When did he...?_ — is stroking his hands, trembling and alive but just barely and—

For the first time in ten years, Newt's head breaches the surface and he gasps, hacking kaiju blue and ocean water out of his lungs. He retracts his hands like they're on fire and Hermann slumps to the floor of Liwen Shao's lab.

"Her-Hermann," he gasps, falling to his knees. " _Herm—_ "

" _Stay back!"_ Liwen shouts, rounding the corner, handgun aimed steadily at his head. Newt doesn't pay her any attention, more focused on the unconscious man slumped on the ground in front of him.

A shot echoes just past his head, deafeningly loud and he startles back, falling flat on his ass.

" _You,_ " Liwen snarls.

"Hermann," he gasps, "You've gotta help him, please, he's—"

And suddenly the blaring red of the sirens, the panic around him, it makes sense and he's—

"I did this," he murmurs. His hands are shaking, sleeves pulled all the way down but there's blood staining the crisp white, he's bleeding how is he—? There's blood spotting where his nails have bitten through, angry half-moon crescents he barely feels as Liwen hauls him to his feet.

Hermann remains limp and statuesque by his feet, sirens blaring.

And they blare and they blare and they blare

* * *

He works with them. Of course he does. He stops the destruction of his own making, barely functioning outside of the husk of equations and numbers—  _Hermann knows this, Hermann should know this where is he where is—_

He makes no snide comments about the kaiju, no threats of world domination even when he feels the words clogging his throat like the acidic burn of vomit. He bites his fists hard enough to break skin, finishes his mission.

And when he's done, he is thrown in a cell, horribly, terrifyingly alone. ( _Not alone, never alone anymore, what have you **done**?_ )

They beat the Precursors out of him, and he isn't sure if it's them or him who's laughing. When they destroy Alice, they scream and Newt seizes, ears ringing and ringing and  _ringing._

The Pentecost kid sneers at him, fists less painful than the words he throws, and even when Newt is healed, he doesn't protest. He  _knows_ what he did, can  _see taste smell_ the memories of atrocities he could have stopped if he was just  _strong enough._

He never stops asking about Hermann. He dreams of him, smile softer than it was ten years ago, long, chalk dusted fingers stroking through his hair. He never speaks, just smiles, chocolate eyes heavy and warm and bright.

There's an argument outside his holding cell one day. A woman is yelling something like, " _...been cleared, you can't just leave him in there! He deserves to know._ "

A few minutes later, Jake thunders into the room, expression stony as he undoes Newt's cuffs.

"Get up," he says gruffly. "There's something you need to see."

He follows, obedient and silent, to the medical wing, heart sinking with every step.

When the nurses lead them to Hermann's bedside, he collapses in sobs, a mess of screaming as they drag him out of the room and back into his cell.

* * *

"How long?" he asks when the other ranger, Lambert, comes into his cell.

The man hesitates, clearly uncomfortable.

"Every since the day you—  _they_ choked him out. Doctor's say the lack of oxygen to his brain... He came out of it a few times in the beginning."

Newt stays silent.

"What are you here for?" he asks finally.

"We're moving you into standard quarters," Lambert replies. "All the scans are showing up clear. There's no reason to keep you here anymore."

Newt is silent for the rest of the time it takes him to get to his new room. It is barren and silent. He lays on the uncomfortable, military standard bed and dreams of his hands around Hermann's throat.

* * *

The dreams don't stop. They're in the old K-Sci lab in Hong Kong, musty and dank and swamped with the yellow green glow of the sample tanks. Hermann stands across from him, silent and smiling, no longer touching him. He wants to ask him everything and anything, but his voice is stuck. They sit there, staring at each other in silence.

In the dreams, Hermann looks just a he did the last time Newt saw him; tall with a mussed up bowlcut and as healthy as someone with his condition could be. Newton knows he's changed; he's thinner, paler. His tattoos are covered in crusting scabs from where his nails dug deep.

Newton visits Hermann every day, not speaking. Just staring, as if his gaze alone can make him wake up. The days blur into weeks.

The dream changes.

He is sitting in his swivel chair in the old lab, and Hermann— Hermann is right in front of him, glowing a soft, vibrant gold like a lantern lit from the inside out.

" _Newton,_ " he breathes, pressing his forehead against the other man's.

Newt scrabbles for his hand, presses it against his cheek, and leans into Hermann's touch, towards the heat of emotion he had been missing for so long. Tears dash down his cheeks, and he is awake in the time between one breath and the next. He throws the covers off and bolts out of the room to the med bay.

There's shouting and the sound of a flatline and he bolts in wearing nothing but his boxers and an old t-shirt just in time for the prison of a body on the hospital bed to breathe its last.

* * *

It's funny ( _it's funny...isn't it?_ ).

He thought when Hermann died, he'd crack like a splitting ship, like the Titanic in the ice, water greedily taking the broken pieces into its frigid embrace. As it is, there's not screaming, no loud protest, just a damning acceptance as the fractures in the hull spread wider. The water is looking more and more inviting each day, but he doesn't want it to take him. It's not what he deserves, to be embraced in death.

Tendo has been called back in, and Raleigh he knows, but he avoids them like the plague.

The pain is overwhelming in its intensity, quiet and stifling, drowning his words like alcohol never could, and as he squeezes the last drops of blood from the tattered tapestries of his tattoos wishing it was  _more_ , he drops.

The Kaidonovsky's owed him a favor yet before they died, and he makes his way to the few Russian suppliers left, brushing off their questions with a hollow sounding laugh and a, "Yeah, man, it's just for a new experiement I've been working on. Gotta get it done some way and with government pecking order and all, you know how it goes."

The glass bottle reads "morphine", but he knows it's probably a cocktail of a dozen other more lethal drugs; the pure stuff has been hard to get, even for the Russians. He hopes that's the case.

His hand doesn't shake as he readies the injection, filling the needle to the top. It's like going to sleep almost, letting his brain shut down and work in a haze like this.

The pinch as the needles slides in is nothing to compare to the constant, throbbing ache in his brain where the Precursors' dug their claws in and ripped chunks of viscera and emotion out.

His head drops to his chest as the drug pumps through his system, and the thought of a forever is a comforting weighted blanket. Already, he can feel the room going cold though his skin  _burns_ and itches. Everything is slow now. Time is a thick, syrupy thing that he doesn't have the strength to push through.

He thinks of the kaiju, of the end of the world. He thinks of Hermann, and for the first time since he has died, a sob rips from his throat. He chokes on bile, can feel his pulse coming slow and heavy now, and even though his vision is blurry, he can see the whispy vision of the man above him with perfect clarity.

Hermann cradles him to his chest, soft and sweet and everything Newt doesn't deserve anymore. He presses his forehead into Hermann's and laughs, then sobs, and laughs again.

Tears roll down his cheeks, melancholy and free, as the dark descends and the red cord snaps and he's gone and he's gone and he's gone.

**Author's Note:**

> please send me asks and requests! i'm on tumblr @kaifukugawa!


End file.
